The bead portion of a pneumatic tire includes a chafer for effectively preventing damage (rim chafing) that is caused by abrasion with a rim. As such chafers, canvas chafers have been widely used because of their ability to effectively prevent damage at the time of mounting to a rim and dismounting from a rim.
Canvas chafers mean rubber-topped fabrics. These canvas chafers, however, may develop problems such as exposure of fibers and breakage of a portion of cords if covering rubber compositions of these canvas chafers wear out after traveling. Another problem thereof is higher frequency of cracks in fiber ends or the adjacent rubber composition, which are caused due to remarkably high tensile stress imposed on a portion of fibers in the chafer in the process of rim assembling.
With the aim of improving rim chafing resistance, Patent Document 1 discloses a pneumatic tire for a passenger vehicle including, as a chafer in the bead portion, a cord fabric for tires which is obtained by weaving warp yarns and weft yarns with specific structures. However, there is still a strong need for improved rim chafing resistance of tires, in particular of fuel-efficient tires, which drives a need for further improvement.
Patent Document 1: JP 2009-127144 A